[tpm] ftruncate (was: Fast(er) way of deleting X lines from start of a file)

[Madison Kelly]

Madison Kelly wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>   Thus far, I've opened a file, read it in, shifted/ignored the first X 
> number of line and then wrote out the resulting file. This works, but 
> strikes me as horribly inefficient. Doubly so when the file could be 
> larger than RAM.
> 
>   So then, is there a more efficient/faster way of saying "Delete the 
> first X number of lines from file foo"?
> 
>  Thanks all!
> 
> Madi

While talking about this with my boss and colleague, one mentioned 
"ftruncate" as a possible solution. There was debate about whether this 
was implemented in perl though. I did a google on the topic, but it 
thought it was a typo for 'truncate'. Does such a beast exist?

Madi